Two of the Hesperides, Chrysothemis (Golden Order) and Asterope (Star Face) stand to the immediate left of the tree. The names of the figures are written on the vase. In this representation, the serpent entwines the apple tree with its golden fruit. The Garden of the Hesperides was depicted on the lower panel of a water pot from about 410 BC. The Greeks put the Garden of the Hesperides in the Far West. A return to Eden would mean traveling west.
This matches the Genesis account which describes civilization developing to the east of Eden. The Hesperides, the nymphs who tend to the ancient garden, its tree, its apples, and its serpent, get their name from Hespere in Greek, which means evening, signifying the West where the sun sets.
Two opposite spiritual standpoints-the former looking to the Creator as the source of truth, and the latter looking to the serpent for it-share the same factual basis. Genesis 3:20 describes Eve as “the mother of all the living.” In a hymn of invocation, the 6th-century BC lyric poet, Alcaeus, refers to Hera as “mother of all.” As the first wife, the Greeks worshipped Hera as the goddess of marriage as the first mother, the Greeks worshipped her as the goddess of childbirth.īoth the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Greek religious tradition insist that their respective first couples came out of an ancient paradise with a serpent-entwined fruit tree. According to the ancient poet Hesiod, Zeus is “the father of gods and men” – the gods being deified ancestors. The term “father Zeus” is a description of the king of the gods that appears over 100 times in the ancient writings of Homer. The Judeo-Christian tradition considers Adam as the father of all humanity. Zeus and Hera, the first couple according to the Greeks, seated together on the east frieze of the Parthenon, from about 435 BC. To the Greeks, they were the first couple, a match for the Adam and Eve of Genesis. (Mary Harrsch/ CC BY NC SA 2.0 ) Zeus and Hera – the Original Occupants of the Gardenīoth the ancient commentator Apollodorus and the Greek playwright Euripides describe Zeus and Hera as the original occupants of the Garden of the Hesperides. Greek made in Paestum South Italy 350-340 BC Terracotta.
Oil Jar (lekythos) with the serpent-entwined apple tree in the Garden of the Hesperides.
The Book of Genesis doesn’t say what kind of fruit it was: It’s from the Greek tradition we get the idea that Eve ate an apple. The Greeks remembered the original paradise, calling it the Garden of the Hesperides, always depicting it with a serpent-entwined apple tree. While Genesis describes the early events and people in humanity’s past, the Greeks depicted those same events and people – except from the point of view that the serpent enlightened, rather than deluded, the first couple in paradise. In fact, ancient Greek religious art connects in very significant ways with Genesis. If the early chapters of the Book of Genesis present a true account of human origins, then ancient secular human history must connect in significant ways to that account.
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